104 



CHAMBERS, EOBEET. 



the style of "W. & E. Chambers, fills so large a 

 space in the bibliography of the nineteenth 

 century, was born at Peebles, a pretty town 

 in the south of Scotland, July 10, 1802. His 

 father was at one time a prosperous manufac- 

 turer, but was ruined by the competition of 

 machine with hand-loom weaving, and, with 

 the wreck of his fortune, removed to Edin- 

 burgh, where, by the aid of his excellent and 

 energetic wife, he managed to bring up credit- 

 ably a family of six children. Eobert, the 

 second son, grew up a quiet, self-contained boy, 

 who may be said to have devoured books from 

 his infancy. In the preface to his collected 

 works he writes : " Books, not playthings, 

 filled my hands in childhood : at twelve I was 

 deep not only in poetry and fiction, but in en- 

 cyclopedias." He read almost unceasingly, 

 and occasional duties required by his parents, 

 he himself tells us, were grudged if they kept 

 him from study. The rudiments of a classical 

 education he obtained at the Peebles Grammar- 

 School, and he made further progress under 

 the teaching of an Edinburgh instructor. But 

 his father's misfortunes compelled Eobert, 

 who was intended for the Church, to forego 

 the advantages of a university education. At 

 the age of fifteen he opened a small book-shop 

 in Leith Walk, a long suburb stretching from 

 Edinburgh to its port-town of Leith. He 

 managed this humble business with so much 

 tact and energy that in 1822 he was enabled to 

 remove to India Place, Edinburgh, where his 

 establishment soon became a favorite resort 

 with intelligent book-buyers. While convers- 

 ing with his customers, he would occupy him- 

 self in making quill-pens, which he sold among 

 other articles of stationery. When George IV. 

 visited Edinburgh, it was the self-reliant young 

 bookseller of India Place who was employed 

 by the city authorities to copy in vellum the 

 address presented by them to the king. Eobert 

 Chambers's first essay in literature was made 

 by commencing a small periodical called the 

 Kaleidoscope. The literary work was entirely 

 his, while his elder brother William set the 

 type and printed it, without any assistance. 

 It was not a pecuniary success, and, in 1823, 

 it was discontinued. The same year his first 

 work appeared, entitled " Illustrations of the 

 Author of Waverley," a pleasant anecdotical 

 volume, which at once attracted for the young 

 author the notice of the leading literary men 

 of Edinburgh. Jeffrey, then wielding the 

 powerful pen of the Review, with the quick 

 intuition of intellectual clairvoyance, said, 

 " There's mettle in that lad." Mr. Chambers's 

 second work, " The Traditions of Edinburgh," 

 appeared in 1824. This entertaining book, 

 which has been frequently reprinted (the last 

 time in 1868), while full of humor and ro- 

 mance, is, at the same time, most accurate in 

 its details. It gained for its author the friend- 

 ship of Sir Walter Scott, Henry Mackenzie, 

 and other literary men of Scotland. In 1826 

 the "Popular Ehymes of Scotland" appeared, 



and in the year following was published his 

 " Pictures of Scotland." Although now a 

 prosperous bookseller, Mr. Chambers found 

 leisure to write and compile upward of a dozen 

 volumes in three years. Among the number 

 was a "History of the Eebellion of 1745-'46," 

 forming the most popular addition made by 

 any author to Constable's Miscellany. It was 

 followed by histories of the insurrections of 

 Montrose, Dundee, and Mar, and by a "Life 

 of James the First." During the same time, 

 he edited a collection of Scottish songs and 

 ballads in three volumes, wrote a compact 

 little history of Scotland for juvenile readers, 

 and edited a newspaper known as the Edin- 

 burgh Advertiser. The agitation throughout 

 Great Britain, in 1831, for parliamentary re- 

 form awakened a necessity for the spread of 

 education. Lord Brougham proclaimed that 

 the "schoolmaster was abroad," and, after the 

 passage of the Eeform Bill of 1832, organized 

 the "Society for the Diffusion of Useful 

 Knowledge." On the 4th of February six 

 weeks before the Penny Magazine was issued 

 by this organization the first number of 

 Chambers^ Edinburgh Journal, a folio sheet 

 of closely-printed matter, was published, at 

 the low price of three halfpence, by William 

 and Eobert Chambers. Its success exceeded 

 not only expectation, but the means of pro- 

 duction. The Edinburgh Journal, the first 

 high-class, cheap periodical published in Great 

 Britain, and its successor the Penny Magazine, 

 were the practical embodiments of that fruit- 

 ful scheme for improving the education of the 

 people by means of good and low-priced 

 serials, which originated with and was so ably 

 advocated by Henry Brougham, James Mill, 

 and others. William and Eobert Chambers 

 and Charles Knight will be remembered as the 

 fathers and founders of this class of literature. 

 In the year 1829 the brothers united in the 

 production of a " Gazetteer of Scotland," 

 which was given to the world in 1832, the 

 year that the firm of W. & E. Chambers, one 

 of the literary and commercial successes of 

 the century, was formed. Three years later, 

 Eobert compiled the "Biographical Diction- 

 ary of Eminent Scotsmen," in four octavo 

 volumes. His next important work was the 

 " Cyclopaedia of English Literature," a publi- 

 cation of higher rank than any previous com- 

 pilation of a similar character. Not less than 

 a quarter of a million of copies of this excel- 

 lent introduction to the British classics have 

 been sold in the United States and Great Brit- 

 ain. This work was followed by his "Life 

 and Letters of Eobert Burns," including his 

 poems. This edition is the most complete and 

 useful ever given to the public, and it should 

 not be forgotten that the profits of the work, 

 amounting to over one thousand dollars, were 

 given to Burns's surviving sister. "Domes- 

 tic Annals of Scotland," three octavo vol- 

 umes, and a "Life of Tobias Smollett," were 

 Eobert Chambers's latest works. He also ed- 



